We live in a time where information is just as much of a commodity as food, water, and fuel. With the Internet at the top of its prime, its serves some sort of purpose to just about any person you can think of…some tech savvy, others not. Online banking, job applications, filing taxes, buying books (or anything else for that matter), attending schools, and even paying bills, all things people do on a daily basis…and all potentially ways to fall prey to identity theft. Don’t get me wrong, there are a vast majority of legitimate services provided, and also an equal representation of evil doers ready to exploit you for that precious information you hold on to so tightly (or at least you should be). The internet is not the only place where people have their sights set on you. Grocery stores, malls, fairs, lawn and garden expos, you name it, all can be information hunting grounds. Social media is rapidly becoming the largest honey-hole for person info…yes, the same Facebook’s and Twitter’s that we’ve all grown to depend on. So today, I will try to raise your awareness and lead you down the path of knowledge. For the purpose of this writing I will refer to personal information as PI. First let me start by stating, for more technically inclined people, this is not news. My target audience is the folks who are new to advancing technology and wish to learn the basic preventative measures in protecting their information. You cannot be afraid to go out and experience what the world has to offer, you just have to be conscience of the threats that lie and wait. Some threats are more obvious that others, so let’s start with the no-brainers. We should all know by now not to give credit card info to anyone we cannot verify…that is just common sense. What about when you THINK you are giving that info to a trusted source? Scammers have become more sophisticated as the times have changed. Tricks like URL jacking redirect users from a legitimate secure site to a site that seems to appear to be the same site you frequently enter sensitive data into, leaving users clueless to the fact that they willingly handed over a social security number, credit card number, or bank account number. So how does one combat such tom-foolery? When entering PI, make sure the sites URL starts with HTTPS, not just HTTP. This means that you are at very least secure. My own personal practice is never using my credit card or bank card for internet transactions. Use a prepaid Visa or Master Card or a secure site like PayPal to make your transactions. The internet gets a bad rap for this, but what most people do not take into consideration is that this same fraud strikes consumers at places like restaurants every day. The best practice is to pay cash when you can. Sure monetary loss is devastating, but what about losing your identity. Your social security number is the one thing that absolutely identifies you as you. How many people reading this have extended their education past high school? Most if not all of us have had to file for federal financial aid. FAFSA is the online tool you use to accomplish this goal. In this process, you enter things like social security numbers, phone numbers, home address, income, age, family member and their info, which is all necessary for the government to help identify you and assist you financially. What if it wasn’t the government that got that info? Who gets that information can depend on three little letters. www.fafsa.org is the federal site that we use for financial aid, www.fafsa.com is not. Both sites are almost identical, but the .com site is selling you FAFSA application assistance to which you don’t figure out until you have already provided all of that sensitive data. Another not so threatening, but equally annoying, scam is sweepstakes and giveaways. Name, address, phone number, that is all you need to provide to win the new car…which you never do. The winner is the people collecting those entries. Now they can sell your contact information for profit, and you gave it to them willingly. This happens at grocery stores, state fairs, home and garden expos, and even at local malls. Giving away PI for the chance to win a prize is foolish as the odds are always against you and never for the recipient of your info. The best way to avoid being scammed is to only give your information to a trusted represented to which you can verify his or her credentials. Last but not least I will touch on social media. I won’t speak long on this because this topic has received ample media attention as of recently. The biggest outrage has been employers asking for Facebook passwords to access personal accounts and scour their info. There can be a plethora of information about yourself on your Facebook page that employers can user to evaluate you as a person. There are a couple of ways to combat this, one, create a bogus account for just this type of situation. Another is to safeguard PI and lock down your account as tight as possible. An account with little to no security settings can easily be probed using a free tool called Searchbook. Remember that whatever you put out there stays out there, so make it as hard as possible to find or just updated your status with non-PI type data. This is just a brief look at some of the issues that people face when it comes to safeguarding PI. I hope I have at least entertained the thought of privacy protection and raised your awareness to some of the risk you could face in your day to day operations. Knowledge is power; keeping educating yourself and you be will not be the next victim of identity theft or PI loss.

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Arthur Whitehouse - Technician: I am a Microsoft and CompTIA certified professional. I have been in the business since 2000. My main focus is on end-user functionality and providing alternatives to what mainstream users are force fed as the way it "should" be in personal computing.